Bike Builds

Can a hardtail make a good gravel bike? I had a Cannondale Scalpel HT Hi-Mod frame collecting dust, so I stopped wondering and built one. It now has a rigid carbon fork, drop bars, SRAM Rival XPLR AXS, and Garbaruk’s new 13-speed cassette with a 10-52 spread. On 2.25-inch tires, with pedals, it weighs 18 lb 7 oz (8.36 kg). That number surprised me. This isn’t a Red build or a weight-weenie parts list. It’s a mid-tier group on a mountain bike frame I bought cheap, and it lands right where most stock carbon gravel bikes do. ...

I put a gravel drivetrain on a road race bike: one chainring, 13 gears, no front shifting. The whole reason I wanted to build a 2026 Cannondale SuperSix Evo Gen 5 this way was to answer a single question — what do you actually give up going 1x on the road? Going in I assumed the answer was “a lot.” It turned out to be a lot less than I expected. ...

This is part two of my Stumpjumper 15 Alloy build series. If you missed the setup — why I picked an alloy frame on sale over a carbon build, and why reliability has mattered more to me than ever since a Cannondale carbon frame broke on me — start with part one. This post covers the single biggest change I made to how the bike actually rides: swapping the stock shock link for a Cascade Components 156mm mullet link. ...

Every build starts with a question, and mine was blunt: could I put together a trail bike I’d actually trust on the descents, keep running for years, and not spend carbon-flagship money to get there? This series is the long answer, broken out from the full build video below into a few focused posts — I’ll walk through the suspension, the drivetrain, the routing that nearly broke me, and the final setup and weight. But before any of that, it’s worth explaining why I landed on this frame at all. Parts come and go. The frame is the one decision everything else has to live with. ...

The Factor Ostro VAM V2 is designed to be both lightweight and aerodynamic — a combination most bikes used to compromise on. I found this frame in almost new condition and built it up exactly the way I wanted. The build runs a mixed Shimano Ultegra/Dura-Ace Di2 12-speed groupset, a Quarq DFour power meter crankset, and BTLos Aerix Pro 52mm wheels with DT 350 hubs and Sapim CX-Ray spokes — coming in at around 1290 grams for the set. One detail I’m particularly happy with: a custom ASA 3D printed headset spacer I designed to match the Tavelo Avro integrated bar and stem setup. ...